May 03, 2011

Garden Update: From Seeds to Seedlings

An Update on Our Backyard Garden

One of the fascinating things about growing our little garden this year has been watching the seedlings emerge from their pods in their little greenhouse. Some of them almost literally explode out of the soil, taking a significant amount of dirt up into the air on their little leaves. It's been almost inspiring.

But getting our garden started for this summer hasn't been all inspiration and cheers of success. There's plenty of fretting (Do they have enough water? Are the plants spaced too closely together?) and playing the age-old game of "Something I Planted or a Weed?"

At the time of our last update, our beds were in place with a potent soil mix, and the seedlings that we had planted in our indoor greenhouse were going strong.

Now, a month later, our little garden is starting to show some signs of life.

On the positive side, our seedlings have mostly performed very well in our indoor greenhouse. We planted a bit of everything indoors, even though we're aware that some of the items may have been better suited for planting directly in the soil. Here's a rundown of where everything stands:

Red Lettuce -- This was a total fail indoors. The seedlings sprouted but never did much more. We replanted these in the garden and a few of them have really taken off.

Go, little lettuce!

Russian Tarragon -- Judging by the comments on our last garden post, this was the most reviled of all the things we planted. Many of you told us this herb was a waste of time, which was good to know. The good news is that our French Tarragon from last year has come back strong in our window boxes. Regardless, our first planting of Russian Tarragon withered. A second planting has blossomed.

Giant Parsley -- It's still indoors but coming along and actually starting to look like parsley.

Blue Lake Bush Beans and Purple Podded Pole Beans -- We've done a mix of planting beans indoor and outdoors. The crop of beans planted indoors has been transplanted to the garden and seem to be doing well.

Beans!

Bull's Blood Beets -- Our beets are a mixed bag. They came up strong indoors, but once transplanted to the garden have just sort of laid there in the soil, though the leaves continue to grow in size. We expected them to stand straight up out of the soil. A crop planted directly in the ground is coming up stronger.

Little beet greens.

Bowling Red Okra -- One of our okra plants is going strong, and another is coming along. Another got trampled and has gone on to the Big Garden in the Sky. Two that we planted indoors never germinated and came out of the soil looking exactly the way it did going in:

Okra seed that didn't germinate.

Golden Sweet Snow Peas and Oregon Sugar Pod Snow Peas -- Both of these pea varieties are looking very healthy and are starting to grow. The snow peas especially seem as if they're trying to strangle one another, wrapping their little tentacles around neighboring plants. We've separated some of them, but let others intertwine.

Snow peas: Strangling each other or just hugging? Hard to say.

Wax Beans -- These were our biggest failure indoors. Nearly all of the cells were too damp and infected with mold, and the seeds rotted in the soil. A few made it indoors and are now thriving outdoors. We feel certain that of all the things we planted indoors, wax beans should not have been one of them.

Purple Jalapenos -- These have struggled inside. They initially came out of the soil looking very good, but are seeming to have difficulty getting any bigger. Of the five plantings we did, two are growing, one is struggling, and the other two withered. We believe this is due to a mold problem we'll discuss below.

Sungold Tomatoes and Borghese Tomatoes -- These seedlings are going strong inside. We expect to move them outside within a week or two.

As you can see in the cells above, some mold started to grow in our greenhouse. We think this is because our soil was too wet and we had left the lid on for too long, causing mold-hospitable conditions. We removed a significant amount of the mold by literally scraping it off and discarding that soil. Within a few weeks, the majority of the mold had disappeared and the seedlings that were growing in cells that had some mold seemed unaffected. That said, the wax beans molded in the soil, and at least a few seedlings came out of the soil looking okay, but then died. Perhaps the mold is to blame. But then again, perhaps not.

For planning the layout of our garden outside, we used the Gardener's Supply online Kitchen Garden Planner. It's a handy tool and we found it useful in figuring out how many plants we could place in a square foot.

One thing we've purchased for the garden during this time has been a box of pellet refills for our indoor greenhouse. These new pellets expand while being encased in netting. At first, we though they were a little odd, kind of like soil wearing a little set of Spanx. But we've found that they make plants much easier to transplant out of the greenhouse and into the garden.

Another development since our last update is that we hung netting on two sides of one of our raised beds in order to support our climbing pea and bean varieties. We ordered a 5x30 foot trellis netting that we cut into sections, attaching the top of it to the fence that borders the beds and the bottom of the netting to the beds themselves. It's not the most beautiful-looking support system, but we think it will get the job done.

Finally, here are shots of our two raised beds as they look right now. The one of the left has more in it at the moment, with beans starting to take off. Most of the seedlings that are still developing indoors will go in the one on the right.

So that's where our garden stands. Not too bad, we think, here at the beginning of May.

How about you? Are you planting this spring? We'd love to hear about your garden.

Comments

Garden Update: From Seeds to Seedlings

An Update on Our Backyard Garden

One of the fascinating things about growing our little garden this year has been watching the seedlings emerge from their pods in their little greenhouse. Some of them almost literally explode out of the soil, taking a significant amount of dirt up into the air on their little leaves. It's been almost inspiring.

But getting our garden started for this summer hasn't been all inspiration and cheers of success. There's plenty of fretting (Do they have enough water? Are the plants spaced too closely together?) and playing the age-old game of "Something I Planted or a Weed?"